1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to diagnosing problems occurring in a dual stack network configured to support IPV6.
2. Brief Discussion of Related Art
Conventional service provider networks generally include routers, such as edge routers and core routers, which route information from an originating source to a destination. Customers can connect to the service provider network by connecting to a provider edge (PE) router.
Internet Protocol Version Six (IPV6) is the latest Internet protocol to be established and offers several advantages over the previous Internet protocol, Internet Protocol Version Four (IPV4), such as an increased addressing range. Service providers have been transitioning from IPV4 to IPV6 using several approaches. In one approach, service providers are implementing IPV4 and IPV6 concurrent. To achieve this, the service providers are implementing dual stack technology that allows IPV6 and IPV4 capability to co-exist in their provider edge routers, where such routers can translate data being sent or received from one protocol version to the other.
Many problems can occur in IPV6 networks, which can be burdensome and time consuming to isolate and diagnose. When some IPV6 failures occur, the customer's network can still be active, but the customer can lose some or all of their services. To resolve these failures, the service provider must find the root cause of the failure quickly to minimize downtime experienced by the customer and to mitigate the impact of the failure on customer services.
It, therefore, is desired to automatically diagnose problems in IPV6 networks and to notify an operator of the type and/or location of the problem.